And it is now officially week 8 of the term. Week 8. Weeeeek 8. Absolutely blows my mind how fast this term is flying by. So here I am, week 8, and we’re prompted to discuss successes within this course, specifically our “Biggest” success. This is a tough one to answer, where even in week 8, I never quite felt like there was one clear, epiphany worthy success story but rather smaller, bite-size success stories.
One of the more general (and notable?) successes within this course is just how smooth the progression of the group project has been. While this very much reflects how fantastic my group members have been with coordinating, communicating, and collaborating, a minor and personal success breakthrough that’s allowed me to feel an equal sense of contribution within these project milestones is making a conscientious effort to be as supportive towards group members / project needs as possible. There was a small extent of time within the term where I was getting consumed by family, social, and other class obligations, where I didn’t feel like I was putting in the same amount of time / effort towards the project as my group members. However, it was this feeling that made me put in the extra effort and find the extra time to put into the project’s progress.
Outside of that, successes primarily involved previously unfamiliar technology and tools, more specifically learning about them, trying to implement them, failing to implement them, trying to implement them again but differently (more times than not requiring multiple iterations of this step), then finally getting them to work in the way that was initially intended for them to work. One of the more difficult things I’ve found with learning new things is the failing aspect of it, where it naturally feels pretty miserable, especially if you’re so many hours deep into a seemingly failed endeavor and you feel like you’ve made little to no progress. But it’s these exact type of sessions, followed with a timely (but o’ so euphoric) successful ending, that to me invokes a larger lesson around the learning experience. Failure many times is inevitable when learning something new, but the important thing is recognizing this trait, taking a big step back from the larger task at hand, finding ways to break down that task into smaller, more accessible undertakings, then working your way through these smaller assignments until you’ve eventually completed the big kahuna goal / learning objective initially sought after.
Overall, it seems like these successes have not only brought meaning and value to those specific situations that manifested them, but quite possibly also lending qualities like those towards personal goals, pursuits, and ambitions. There’s no doubt that these mentioned successes were excellent experiences and served as important milestones to this class, but to have these successes attached to some of the most beneficial life skills, whether it be teamwork or the process of learning, is why these successes mattered.
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